Historical Commission’s Monthly Tales of Our Town

Doris Ellen Pierce, one of the few West Newbury women soldiers in WWII—and one of the few WACs to serve abroad—was born on November 19, 1919, in Gloucester. She was the only daughter of Lester Ward Pierce, Sr. and Florence Elizabeth Thompson, a West Newbury native. Before she turned five, the family returned to West Newbury, where her parents had married and lived as newlyweds. Tightly woven into the Town’s social fabric, the Pierce family joined in civic, religious, and collegial activities. Doris Pierce participated in Laurel Grange, All Saints Women’s Guild, and served on the Junior Community Club’s executive committee. Perhaps in honor of her father’s WWI service in the aviation corps, on June 26, 1943, Pierce enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps, serving in the Army Air Forces. Pierce’s assignments in the Air Transport Command (ATC) took her to Nashville’s Berry Field, on to the Great Falls, MT, air base, and then to Grenier Field (now Manchester Airport). Leaving her posting in nearby NH, in 1945 Pierce sailed across the world to Karachi, British India—the western hub of the ATC’s India-China route. After six months in Karachi, Pierce returned home at war’s end to be discharged in December 1945. Upon her homecoming, Pierce remained active in the WAC reserves, and (with her mother) in the Town’s American Legion Auxiliary. She served for many years as a clerk in West Newbury’s Post Office, retiring with her husband Robert Towne to Texas in 1978. Doris Pierce Towne died in 1998, and is buried at Fort Bliss Cemetery, in El Paso.

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